15 Proven Tactics Of How To Get Motivation Back In Life (For The 40+)

“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”

Dale Carnegie

Motivation is the key when it comes to staying focused, being productive, and achieving more. However, motivation can be fleeting, especially with age, with bursts of inspiration that eventually fade.

So, the question is how to get motivation back or self-motivate yourself to achieve what you want out of life beyond your 40s.

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Understanding The Challenges Of Staying Motivated In Your 40s And Beyond

Before looking into ways to get your motivation back, it’s important to understand why maintaining motivation can be difficult.

While finding motivation can still be relatively easy, holding onto it is challenging. Here are some common reasons why staying motivated can be tough in midlife.

Self-Doubt Creeps In

As you age, you often let the limiting beliefs you have formed over the years overpower you.

Your mindset often becomes the primary obstacle to sustaining motivation. Initial excitement about a new task or beginning can quickly lead to self-doubt.

Losing Sight Of Your Purpose

You set your goals, and you write down in your journal what you want to achieve, but you forget all about it as you get busy with life.

Yet to constantly find motivation, you have to regularly remind yourself of what the purpose of your goal was in the first place, or else getting motivation back is difficult.

Reverting To Old Habit

Establishing new healthy habits is simple; maintaining them proves more difficult as comfort zones lure you back into unhealthy routines. This is where you need to self-motivate yourself to stay on track.

Failing To Envision The End Goal

Sometimes, faltering motivation stems from an inability to visualize the bigger picture and comprehend the eventual benefits of change.

The Challenge Of Change

Change is inherently arduous, especially with age. Often, when faced with no choice, you may tend to feel unsure and demotivated. So you need to know how to get back motivation and make the extra effort to complete what you set yourself to.

In essence, while motivation may not last indefinitely, perseverance and consistency remain essential for achieving your life goals in the long run.

Journaling is a great tool for understanding the reasons why you lack motivation and penning down your thoughts to overcome those self-limiting beliefs.

Download The Daily Journal we have designed for you using templates we downloaded from Creative Fabrica to get your motivation back!!

15 Ways to Get Motivation Back In Life After 40

Looking for quick and easy ways to get motivation in life and hold on to it a little longer in midlife?

Here are 15 of our best motivational tips:

How to Get Motivated: Reevaluate and Adjust Your Goals

As you hit your 40s, you need to reevaluate and adjust your goals. You may have over the years aspired for many things in life. Somewhere deep down, all of these desires have found a place in your mind and heart.

Yet, now is a great time to look back at what inspired you while setting goals and decide if you need to make some adjustments.

Step 1:

Look At Your Current Goals. 

Start by looking at or considering any goals you have had for a while.

The ones you have worked on and the ones you haven’t. Look at all the big and small goals you have set from time to time, from starting a new business and losing weight to drinking more water or being more social. They all matter.

Step 2:

Cross Off Anything You No Longer Have An Interest In. 

Of these goals, which ones have you not thought about in a while? Which ones do you never work towards?

Are there any you don’t even remember setting? These are indications that they no longer matter to you, and you can cross them off for now.

Step 3.

Create New Goals.

From the remaining goals, you can then decide which one goal is a priority for you and create a plan for achieving it. This can spark new motivation to accomplish them.

How to Stay Motivated: Focus on Your Personal Gain

What exactly are you hoping to gain from this task you are trying to be motivated about? What is the end goal or reward? There should be some type of personal gain that you can visualize.

The reason this is important is because when you set goals or have ideas in your mind about what you want to accomplish and they are someone else’s ideas, not your own, it is almost impossible to achieve them.

You need to be sure these are YOUR goals, your dreams, and your aspirations. When you have that and can see your own personal gain, you can hold onto that motivation a little longer.

How To Keep Motivation: Break Up Bigger Projects Into Smaller Tasks

Looking at a big project or goal can be intimidating, and you may feel like you will never get it done. Break it up into smaller tasks that are much more doable. Even if it is something small, there are probably multiple steps to getting it done.

For example, I am a blogger, and something as simple as writing a blog post for my blog is not just about writing a post. There is brainstorming, research, outlining, writing the intro and conclusion, the headings, and then the bulk of the content.

There are a lot of small steps you can go through, one at a time. It seems much more doable when you think about it like this. This can work for any type of goal, task, or project you have in your personal or professional life.

You can create SOPs for almost everything that you want to do in your life. If you, like me, are working on an online business, you should check out my friend Lindsay Kelly’s blog post, where she talks about how to create standard procedures in your business. You can apply it to every aspect of your life and make it more organized and productive.

How to Increase Motivation: Find A New Way To Get it Done

You might find that your lack of motivation is simply because of the process you have chosen, and you just need to find another method.

For example, if you are trying to stay motivated to lose weight, are you going at it too aggressively?

If you are trying to restrict your food too much and over-exercise, you won’t stay motivated for long. This is too much to do, too quickly, and it is hard on both your physical and mental health.

You need to take it slow, focusing on healthy habits that will help you lose weight sustainably and consistently.

How To Be Motivated: Have a Detailed Plan of Action

Any time you have a goal or task to complete, you should know exactly what steps to take to get it done. This is why you never want to rush into goals or projects, but take your time planning them out so you can follow through.

If there is something you have been wanting to do, but can’t seem to find the motivation to get it done, look at the process and order of steps required. Have you broken it into multiple tasks?

Do you know what needs to be done first? Do you know how long it should take you from beginning to end? If you don’t have these answers, then you know where to start.

How To Revive Lost Motivation: Keep Track of Your Progress and Rewards

Since motivation on its own isn’t going to last long, you need a way to gain momentum and know how to get motivation back by yourself.

A good way to do this is to track your progress toward your goals and reward yourself for each mini-goal you accomplish.

The way you track your progress will vary depending on what your goal is. For something like weight loss, it could either be how much weight you lose or the number of days you are consistent with your diet and exercise.

If you are trying to start a new business, then progress might be made with each major step you take, like getting a business license, buying inventory, coming up with a marketing plan, and hiring employees.

How To Be A Self-Motivator: Use Visualization

Visualization techniques are a great way to stay motivated by focusing on how you want your future to look.

With visualization, you close your eyes and try to imagine reaching that goal or finishing whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.

The trick here is to both see it in as much detail as you can muster and to feel what it would feel like to accomplish it. Try to put yourself in that position, where you feel your happiness, excitement, pride, and relief as if you have already gotten it done.

The more you can keep visualizing it, the more real it becomes, and the easier it is to get motivated and stay motivated.

How To Feel Motivated Everyday: Check-in With Yourself Often

Instead of just constantly working and being on the grind, take some time to check in on yourself and see how you’re doing. This seems so simple, but you tend to forget this and just keep working harder.

Checking in on yourself is about really understanding what is going on, how you are feeling, and how things have changed for you.

It is possible that your lack of motivation and slower productivity are not just about work but also about your own mental health issues. Maybe you have burnout from trying to do too much, you haven’t taken enough breaks, or your personal life is affecting your ability to focus.

A great way to check in is by using a journal. Journaling helps you find clarity about everything in your life, from how you feel to your thought patterns. You might even discover some new goals that spark your inspiration and motivation once more.

How To Get Back Motivation: Practice Positive Self-Talk

The kinder you are to yourself and the more you lift yourself, the more you will begin to believe it.

Your subconscious believes what you believe and what you tell yourself, even if it might seem silly in the beginning. This is where the power of affirmations and positive thoughts comes in.

Here are a few ways to practice more positive self-talk:

Use daily affirmations.

Affirmations are short sentences or statements that are always positive and make you feel good.

They are written in a way that you can remember them and chant them to yourself whenever you need extra motivation. An affirmation might be “I am valuable and matter” or “I am strong and can accomplish anything.”

Journal with positivity only. 

There are many ways to write in a journal, and all of them benefit you in different ways. For positivity and positive self-talk, you want to write positively. This means not writing about how bad of a day you had or how sad you feel, but finding a good spin on everything.

Practice gratitude. 

Practicing gratitude is an amazing way to practice positive self-talk. It is an automatic response where, when you talk about or feel what you appreciate most in your life, you begin to feel more positivity and light radiate through you.

Have positive people in your inner circle. 

The people you choose to surround yourself with can also make a big difference when it comes to how you feel about yourself.

Spend less time with toxic friends who are just constantly negative and make you feel inferior to them, and surround yourself with positive, uplifting, and inspiring people.

How To Get Motivated Again: Find Out Why You Procrastinate

Procrastination is very common, and while it isn’t completely avoidable, there are things you can do to mitigate it.

To start with, you need to figure out why you procrastinate in the first place. You likely have a few situations in your life that make you procrastinate more and start to lose focus.

Here are a few common reasons:

• You are under a lot of stress
• You don’t have faith in your own abilities
• You underestimated how much work was involved
• You don’t know how to start
• You keep getting distracted by other things

Once you can figure out why you tend to procrastinate and lose your drive, you can start working to reverse it and know how to get motivation back.

How To Get More Motivation: Identify When You Lose Motivation and Why

There are likely certain things that trigger your lack of motivation, whether it is people, circumstances, news, stress, or mental health conditions. Similar to procrastination, it is important to figure this out for yourself since everyone is a little different.

Think back to the last time you were super motivated about something. When you felt that rush of adrenaline and felt yourself getting excited about the possibilities. Think of the time when you wrote down your goal and made a plan to achieve it, and how you could visualize exactly how you would feel when you accomplished it.

Now, try to think how long that motivation stuck around and what happened to it. When did it start to disappear? When did you lose track of what you were doing? Was anything specific going on at the time?

Sometimes, it is as simple as time passing and you losing some of your motivation along the way. But you might also notice patterns in your own life that lead to a loss of drive to continue toward certain goals.

In all this, there will be pockets of downtime. Yet with a little bit of motivation and planning you can make good use of those moments of downtime. Please read our blog post Time Management Strategies: Eliminate Distractions and Make Your Downtime Productive (For The 40+)

How To Become Motivated In Life-Find Your Work Zone

Your work zone sometimes called your focus hour or golden hour, is the time during the day when you tend to be the most productive. Everyone has a short period, often 2–5 hours, where they can get the most work done.

This is when you work faster, think more clearly, and have more focus. You probably get more done during this time than the entire rest of the day, which is completely normal.

But the tricky part is that it’s different for everyone. Some people work best early in the morning, while others work late at night. Some people have their golden hours late in the morning or right at lunchtime.

Once you find it, you can take advantage and plan for work during those times. Get rid of the distractions, and get to work.

How Do You Get Motivated: Find a Way to Make it Fun

Yes, even work can be fun. No matter what you are trying to accomplish and what you need motivation for, you can find a way to make it enjoyable.

If you are trying to work on your fitness or health, find workouts that aren’t just running on a treadmill, but actually hype you up. Maybe you do a fast-paced dance workout or you go on a hike with friends.

If it is a work-related goal, you might discover new ways to get things done or enjoy something creative as part of your work.

How To Be Motivated: Get Others Involved

Not sure you can keep up your motivation on your own? Find an accountability partner! Many people need this, they need the support and the community. They need someone else to hype them up and get them excited about accomplishing their goals.

If you tend to keep your goals to yourself, try it a different way this time. You might find that when others know about what you’re trying to accomplish, that motivation sticks around a little longer.

That is the reason I love The PIPs community created by Sadie Smilie. We share our wins with our buddies in the group and participate in challenges related to blogging or the different memberships that people have in the group and it motivates you to keep going.

If you want to try out something new in your midlife, either to boost your confidence or to learn ways of earning passive income I highly recommend trying out Sadie’s Blogging foundations course. It gives you a detailed overview of how to set up a blog and make it profitable.

How Do You Become Motivated: Make Good Use of Your Downtime

When you have downtime, whether forced or voluntary, you can still make good use of it and not let it feel wasted.

Downtime is not only a break you choose to take, but also when you have finished one project and it’s not time to start on the other one, or when you have a day off because of a computer issue or your internet isn’t working.

These are all opportunities to switch things up, get creative, and do something else that is productive.

You might get out one of your self-help books you have been putting off reading, journal for a while, go for a walk, or call a friend.

How to Get Motivation Back For The 40+: Key-Takeaways

Finding motivation after 40 may require a shift in mindset and habits, but it is certainly achievable.

By living in a supportive environment, enjoying new experiences, and staying strong despite challenges, you can find motivation for life and the drive for personal growth and mindset mastery.

Remember, while age is just a number, the key lies in staying proactive and committed to self-improvement, regardless of where you are on life’s journey.

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